GLI MT300A questions about flashing?

Technical Support for Routers
1

ok I need some help and this maybe me just being a but dumb so here goes.

I’ve followed the instructions here Debrick via Uboot - GL.iNet Docs and here GL.iNet GL-MT300A [Old OpenWrt Wiki]

on how to upload a stock OpenWrt firmware to the system, I’ve also used the upload button in the GLi web interface, all of them seem to-do the job and claim i should leave the router for a few minutes to flash. I’ve waited as long as 10 minutes and I’ve not been able to get back into a web interface. however when i plug a cable into the router it does indeed give my PC a DHCP address 192.168.8.x

what am i doing wrong?

if i use the U-Boot method and re-flash the OEM rom from GLi it loads without any issue

2

If you flash another firmware to the router, don’t reserve settings.

Some firmware even don’t have UI.

If you use our firmware and reserved settings, finally it doesn’t work, please press and hold the reset button for 10 seconds to reset the router.

3

Hi Alzhao, you were correct and i was trying to flash an openwrt image that didn’t have a web interface as part of the image.

However I have another question now that I am able to get back into the standard Luci web interface i’ve noticed that there is no option to share the micro SD card anymore like there was in the GLI firmware?

is this a simple thing to get working again ? how can i go about getting it running again?

4

GLi implements USB a bit different than standard OpenWrt does, and they may offer you another way. I think it uses UPNP, but not sure.

In standard OpenWrt you need usually three things

USB Basic Support - USB Basic Support [Old OpenWrt Wiki] (USB is not only for storage, you can run Wifi and 3\4G adapters)

USB Storage Support - USB Storage [Old OpenWrt Wiki] You will need to select one or more file systems (KMOD-FS-…)

Samba (or similar depending on your host client environment) - Samba [Old OpenWrt Wiki]

You will not get any of the nice GUI features that you get in GLi, meaning all file management is client based. You can configure all things through LuCi, though you may need to set some permissions using Putty.

I did not need to do anything special to get the SD card working on my “other” device, but if you have problems try configuring a USB thumb drive to validate all is good. Never got NTFS running, and mostly use FAT32 (VFAT) which is exactly the opposite of what works in the GLi config\firmware. Also was unable to get EXFAT working in the Luci GUI, though I think it was working in CLI. I reformatted my 64gb micro-sd to VFAT. If your not on Windows you should be able to use EXT3 or EXT4 which I think will offer the best performance.

5

to use USB stick content, there is a lot of work actually, configure smba, configure access privilege, mount disk, take care of file system format, hotplug etc.

So, read the docs carefully according to @RangerZ’s links.

6

OK so I’ve followed the advice of RangerZ’s links on the openwrt website, and i have all the required USB and storage packages installed. however I still cannot see the SD card even after a reboot of the router. But plugging in a standard USB Memory and refreshing the web interface i can see the stick is available to use.

Not quite sure why this is? LSUSB gives a BIG list mostly “Unknown line at line xxx” with it showing a few devices.

output of df -h shows the following

Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 2.0M 2.0M 0 100% /rom
tmpfs 61.4M 1.3M 60.1M 2% /tmp
/dev/mtdblock6 12.2M 2.4M 9.7M 20% /overlay
overlayfs:/overlay 12.2M 2.4M 9.7M 20% /
tmpfs 512.0K 0 512.0K 0% /dev

so its not as though the system’s mounted it some how, its a 2Gb TransFlash card that was showing up find with the stock GL firmware but hasn’t worked since the flash to openwrt DESIGNATED DRIVER (Bleeding Edge, 12009)

any suggestions or help would really be appreciated.

7

@kristiaan_b

Lets start by listing all the packages you ADDED for USB support, including the FS (file system packages). Also include your /etc/config/fstab file.

How are the 2 media formatted? Please consider formatting the SD as FAT32 so it is VFAT compatible, at least for now. It has the least issues with file security, and will be the easiest way to validate the HW is working. If it is formatted as EXFAT I do not think you will see it.

Please confirm you have the 3 firewall rules, though I suspect that if your USB thumb drive is working then this is not of concern.

Check your kernel log (Luci) by searching USB. In my case there are 30 or so log lines that indicated there are multiple USB (USB 1.0, USB 1.1 related to ehci). Post what you see here too.

I do not think you can compare the GLi usb implementation to the (more or less) OpenWrt documented process. There is no fstab in GLi. VFAT does not work and NTFS does.

 

8

@RangerZ, firstly thank you for taking the time to help me out with this. I will try and answer your questions in order.

Lets start by listing all the packages you ADDED for USB support, including the FS (file system packages). Also include your /etc/config/fstab file.

kmod-scsi-core, kmod-usb-uhci, kmod-usb2, usbutils, kmod-usb-storage-extras, kmod-usb-storage, block-mount, kmod-fs-exfat, kmod-fs-ntfs

FSTAB:

config global

option anon_swap ‘0’

option anon_mount ‘0’

option auto_swap ‘1’

option auto_mount ‘1’

option delay_root ‘5’

option check_fs ‘0’

 

config mount

option enabled ‘0’

 

How are the 2 media formatted? Please consider formatting the SD as FAT32 so it is VFAT compatible, at least for now. It has the least issues with file security, and will be the easiest way to validate the HW is working. If it is formatted as EXFAT I do not think you will see it.

The Memory Stick is formatted using NTFS the SD card is a 2GB card formatted as FAT according to windows.

Please confirm you have the 3 firewall rules, though I suspect that if your USB thumb drive is working then this is not of concern.

Sorry i should have been clear when i stated the USB stick worked, it seems that OpenWrt was able to see the stick when inserted, but other than this it doesn’t seem to work mounting the stick states that i need to run a set of commands to get it duplicated and looking at it via \router-ip seems to show nothing at all

Check your kernel log (Luci) by searching USB. In my case there are 30 or so log lines that indicated there are multiple USB (USB 1.0, USB 1.1 related to ehci). Post what you see here too.

Log is attached as its longer than the forum would let me post, at the end of the log you can see it finds and mounts the USB stick i inserted.but unless i missed something it doesn’t seem to see the SD Card.

I do not think you can compare the GLi usb implementation to the (more or less) OpenWrt documented process. There is no fstab in GLi. VFAT does not work and NTFS does.

Sorry I re-read my post and realized i could have been clearer with my comment, what i meant to say was that in the stock firmware using the advanced interface (luci) the handling of USB media for sharing onto the network etc was a lot better / slicker than the implementation in the stock openwrt build. i now know that a lot of this is not stock openwrt features and its likely the guys at GLi have customized their build to accomplish this.

hope this helps RangerZ again thanks for the help.

9

kmod-scsi-core should be kmod-usb-core

kmod-fs-exfat should be kmod-fs-vfat

You probably also want to install samba36 server and luci-app-samba

I never got ntfs working and the word on the openwrt forum is sloooow. Again for now, if you can format this as FAT32 we can make sure the hardware works and deal with file systems and security after.

I think you should do a careful reread of the links I gave you.

update and repost the log